


Tax Season

by AtypicalOwl



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Crack, Gen, Pinkie blowing everyone's minds, Pinkie sense, tax season
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-17
Updated: 2013-03-17
Packaged: 2017-12-05 13:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/723700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtypicalOwl/pseuds/AtypicalOwl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When tax season hits Ponyville, everypony is having a hard time with the paperwork. No one expects Pinkie Pie to bounce in and save the day!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tax Season

Sugarcube Corner was oddly quiet, considering today was Pinkie's day to watch the shop. Rainbow Dash nosed open the door, glancing around suspiciously.

No crying Pound or Pumpkin Cake.

No exploding party poppers or showers of confetti.

No kitchen covered in flour or spontaneous singing about baked goods.

Something had to be wrong, Rainbow was sure of it. She crept slowly into the store, careful to make no noise. The pouring rain outside accounted for the lack of customers, but the lack of any movement inside couldn't be explained if one pink pony was supposed to be there.

The door closed softly behind Rainbow as she reached the middle of the room. The usual displays of baked goods were stocked with tasty treats. Sweet smells filled the air. But that odd silence still prevailed.

"Pinkie?" Rainbow whispered, reluctant to disturb the quiet.

No response.

"Pinkie Pie, are you here?" She asked, a bit louder.

A thump came from the back room. "Oh, hey Rainbow Dash! I'm back here!"

After following Pinkie's voice, Rainbow was greeted with a shocking, incongruous sight.

Pinkie was seated at a table in the back room. That wasn't strange in and of itself. It was what was on the table that didn't seem to fit the scene: paperwork. Piles and piles of paperwork, and Pinkie was in the middle of it, holding a pencil firmly in her teeth.

"Woah, Pinkie! What is all of this?" Rainbow asked, examining the papers.

"Buh hafes fahes."

"What was that?"

Pinkie spit out the pencil. "The Cakes' taxes."

Rainbow blinked. "Sorry, one more time. I thought I heard you say you're doing the Cakes' taxes."

"Yup! They got them done at some tax preparer last year, but they didn't do a very good job!" Pinkie frowned at the paper in front of her. "A lot of these numbers are really off! So I said I'd do them this year to make sure they were done right!"

"Pinkie, don't take this the wrong way..." Rainbow stared at the pages and pages of figures. "But why are you doing the Cakes' taxes?"

"I thought I just told you, silly! I can do them better!"

Rainbow sat down. Hard. "How do you even know how to do taxes? I thought you just helped with the baking!"

Pinkie laughed. "Rainbow Dash, I'm the official accountant for Sugarcube Corner!"

"Huhbuhwha?"

"I'm just really good with numbers, you see. I have to be, really. Parties can get expensive, so I have to make sure I keep track of the budget! There won't be many smiles if my wallet's empty after getting overcharged for balloons." She shot Rainbow a sly grin. "Besides, how profitable do you think rock farms really are?"

Thrown by the sudden change in subject, Rainbow tried to keep up. "Um, not very?"

"Exactly!" Pinkie glanced around, then motioned Rainbow closer before continuing in a hushed voice. "Don't tell anyone, but the only way we kept the farm solvent was a series of tax loopholes. It runs in the family, I learned everything I know about accounting from my Grannie Pie."

"Wait, so... Pinkie, you're an egghead too?"

Pinkie laughed. "I guess I am, Reading Rainbow!"

* * *

 "Pinkie darling, please!"

"Nope!"

"PUHLEEEEEEEEEEZE!"

"Nope!"

"Please! Pinkie, if you just help me get through this audit unscathed I will make you as many dresses as you want with every streamer and balloon I can get my hooves on!"

"Rarity, if you didn't want to get audited, you shouldn't have tried to underdeclare your profits on form 1042-G!"

"I didn't do it on purpose! I'm a fashion connoisseur, not a mathematician! Oh, this is the _last_ time I try to save a few bits by filing these darned things myself!"

* * *

 A clatter followed by the rustling of pages woke Spike from a strange but pleasant dream involving hummingbirds, Luna, and a few potted plants. Rubbing his eyes, he stumbled sleepily down the wooden stairs of the library to see what was the matter.

What greeted him in the main room of the library was a sight to behold! Papers and books flying everywhere, surrounded by the telltale purple glow of Twilight's magic, and a large table had been moved to the center of the room and almost buried in more books, papers, and quills.

Spike blinked a few times, taking in the sight and looking for Twilight, who he eventually located in the center of the paper hurricane. “What's going on, Twi?”

Twilight squeaked and jumped a bit, and the flying books and papers fell a few feet before she caught them again and cautiously lowered them to the floor.

“It looks like the bookapalypse in here, what's the matter?”

Twilight sighed. “I didn't realize that it was April already! Since I've lived in Ponyville a year now, I have to file my taxes.”

Stepping cautiously around the debris on the floor to make his way to Twilight, Spike asked, “So what's the big deal? You had taxes in Canterlot, right?”

“Oh Spike, you don't understand!” Twilight picked up a book at random and flipped through it, looking for who knows what. “In Canterlot, I had the assistance of the Royal Accountants. Here, I'm on my own! I have to do all this paperwork myself!”

Spike brushed aside a few stray quills and glanced at some of the papers. “Man, I can hardly tell what they're asking in some of these. How do you tell what goes in Lines 49-52?”

“That's the problem, I don't know!” Twilight said. “The official manual isn't much help, I've needed a dictionary and thesaurus to attempt to translate it, but then I didn't know whether to declare partial earnings from my time in Canterlot as well as Ponyville or if it's all Ponyville since I've been living here so long. I haven't found an answer in _Taxes for Derpies_ or _Common Tax Law_ or any of these books! And these problems are just the tip of the iceberg!”

“Do you need any help?” Spike asked. “I could send a letter to Canterlot and ask the Royal Accountants some of these questions for you.”

“No, I have to do this myself! I can't rely on them for the rest of my life!” Twilight sighed again, then rolled her shoulders, trying to work out whatever kinks she had given herself in her tizzy. “And I just heard that Rarity got audited after she messed up doing them herself. I can't get this wrong! I... I just need some peace and quiet to be able to work through all of this. You can have the day off, Spike.”

“Okay Twilight, but just let me know if you need anything else, okay?”

Spike left the library, closing the door quietly behind him. The sounds of rustling paper and Twilight frantically talking to herself started up again, and he frowned. _It's never good when she gets herself this worked up,_ he thought. _Let's hope she leaves the time travel spells alone this time._

Aside from the paper storm inside the library, it was a pleasant Ponyville day, and Spike found himself simply wandering the town, enjoying the sunshine and breeze. Every so often, though, his thoughts would drift back to Twilight and her tax troubles, and a gloomy frown would pass over his face.

As he turned onto Main Street, a tantalizing smell drifted past his nose, and Spike followed the scent to Sugarcube Corner.

The bell above the door tinkled cheerily as he entered, and he found Pinkie Pie just setting out a new batch of donuts in the display case. “Hi Spike!” She said brightly, positioning the treats just so.

“Hey Pinkie,” Spike said, sniffing the air. “Say, could I get one of those donuts?”

“Coming right up!”

The donut was as yummy as it smelled, but it did little to improve Spike's mood. Some of his worry must have shown on his face, because Pinkie plopped herself down at his table with a cupcake of her own and asked what was the matter.

Spike told her the story, about waking up to find Twilight in a frenzy about her taxes. “I'm really worried that the stress will make her do something insane. Again. You remember what happened when she was worried about not getting her friendship reports in weekly, right? I don't want her to go crazy and turn the whole town into jello or something.”

Through Spike's story, Pinkie had been nodding and “mmhmm”-ing at all the appropriate moments, and now she sat up straighter, a determined look on her face. “Well, I guess I'll just have to help her with her taxes, then!”

Spike choked on a bit of his second donut. Once the offending pastry had cleared his windpipe, he asked, “You? Help Twilight with her taxes?”

“Yep! Don't worry Spikie, Auntie Pinkie has it covered!” She left in a pink blur, leaving a confused dragon, a half-eaten cupcake, and a cloud of crumbs in her wake.

Spike stared after her for a moment, gaping, then shrugged and turned his attention to the leftovers. “Well, I guess Pinkie has it under control. I doubt she'd mind if I finished her cupcake for her. Don't want to let it go to waste!”

About a quarter of an hour later, belly full of baked goods, Spike returned to the library. First, he pressed his ear up against the door, checking for the sounds of paper storms or a panicking unicorn. All he heard was calm voices, so he pushed the door open and stepped inside, trying not to disturb Pinkie and Twilight.

The ponies were bent over the paperwork at the table, and the books from before were stacked in the corner and shelved haphazardly.

“... how you need to fill this one out,” Pinkie was saying. “You should be able to mark Spike as a dependent, but you're going to have to be careful in the future because dragons don't age at the same rate as ponies, so you'll have to take that into account.” She pushed a pair of glasses further up on her nose. “Then after that, all you have to do is add all these columns up and write that down here.”

“How do you know all this?” Spike asked.

Twilight jumped, but Pinkie just turned to him and grinned. “I'm the Cake's accountant, so I'm really good with taxes. I even have a special branch of the Pinkie sense dedicated to these forms!”

While Pinkie was talking to Spike, Twilight had levitated a quill and was making a mark on one of the sheets in front of her.

Pinkie's left front leg twitched, and her corresponding back leg thumped the ground. She swiveled her head to look at Twilight, and without even looking down at the paper, said “Wrong box! That probably should have been the one below it!”

Twilight blinked and looked closer at the sheet, then shook her head in disbelief before scratching something out. “That's amazing, Pinkie.”

“Left shoulder twitch plus left hoof cramp equals misplaced line item! It's as simple as that!”

“Thanks for helping her with this, Pinkie,” Spike said.

“No problem! Taxes aren't much to smile about, but we can throw a party when they're all done! And the faster they get done, the sooner we can party, so I'm happy to help!” Pinkie's legs twitched again, and she rolled her eyes. “Try again, Twilight!”

Twilight set the quill down and dropped her head to the table in exasperation. “There are two things in this life I will never be able to understand,” her muffled voice said. “Pinkie sense, and these tax forms.”

* * *

After Twilight's taxes were done, Pinkie declared they needed a break before actually filing them (“That's how typos happen, silly!”), so the group was heading back to Sugarcube Corner for lunch.

On the way, they encountered Fluttershy, who seemed nervous about something but was having trouble bringing it up.

“Do you need tax help too?” Pinkie finally asked.

“N-no, actually, I got those done last week. Although if you could look them over before I send them in I'd really appreciate it but you don't have to it you don't want to." Her voice trailed off. "I don't want to be a bother.”

Pinkie leaned in close to hear the last of what Fluttershy said, and they nearly bumped heads when Fluttershy looked up again. “The truth is, I'm having trouble budgeting for some specialty food for some of my more exotic animals. I know you're really good at finding bargains, and, well, some of the vendors still walk all over me when I try to get a good deal. So, um, could you help? If it's not too much trouble?”

A big grin stretched Pinkie's face, and she nodded enthusiastically. “Of course, Fluttershy! How about I help balance your books while I'm there too? And I know a few mail-order catalogs that have sales all the time, so if I'm not around you can still get this stuff! Come on, we have critter food to buy!” With that, she bounced off in the general direction of Fluttershy's cottage, the yellow pegasus struggling to catch up.

“Wow,” Spike said flatly.

“Yeah,” Twilight agreed. “Who knew Pinkie was a financial genius? I guess there's more to some ponies than meets the eye.”

* * *

 “So these are Sweet Apple Acre's quarterly profits?”

“Eeyup.”

“Hm, you're doing pretty well this year. But what's this here? Oh wait, is that... Oh, I see what you did there. That's the apple sales minus the cost of pie ingredients, right?”

“Eeyup.”

“Well Big Mac, I guess you beat me this year. Sugarcube Corner made just a little less than you guys did this quarter. I guess I owe you a-- mmph!”

“Oh, are y'all doing yer finance stuff in here? Sorry to bother you. Let me know when yer done, all that fancy mathematics gives me a headache.”

“...”

“...”

“You don't want her to know about our wager?”

“Nope.”

“I guess that makes sense. It could cause quite a scandal if anyone knew the head of the Apple family was getting pear fritters on the side.”

“Eeyup.”

* * *

 “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Twilight's panicked shout startled Spike so violently he fell out of bed. He dashed downstairs, nearly tripping and falling head over heels in his haste. He asked Twilight what was the matter, and in response, she pointed a hoof at a letter on the table that must have been delivered with the day's mail, then continued sobbing in the corner.

Spike picked up the letter and scanned it, eyes widening as he reached the end.

 

> **_Dear Miss Twilight Sparkle,_ **
> 
> **_This letter is to inform you that as a student of Princess Celestia, you are exempt from paying yearly taxes, even though you currently reside outside of Canterlot. You do not need to file taxes this year, or any year in the future, as long as you remain in good standing with the princess. Enclosed, please find a refund for the full amount you paid us. If you have any further questions, please contact the Royal Equestrian Treasury._ **
> 
> **_Thank you,_ **
> 
> **_Paper Pusher_ **
> 
> **_Senior Royal Accountant and Head of the Royal Equestrian Treasury Department_ **

**Author's Note:**

> This time last year, a friend gave me a prompt about Pinkie Pie being the Cake's accountant. I wrote a little bit, then never touched it again. Today, I got kicked out of the main room of the house because my mom needed peace and quiet to do our taxes, and the rest of this fic was born.


End file.
